


See How They Rise Up

by cerebel



Category: No Ordinary Family
Genre: Future, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:04:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerebel/pseuds/cerebel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JJ Powell is sixty-one years old today.</p><p>And there is nothing left of him. Except his power.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See How They Rise Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bette/gifts).



> I know you requested slash for this one. I planned to make it a futurefic, and have it involve slash, but suddenly the story took on a life of its own, and slash didn't enter the picture. I know it's probably a little darker than you were looking for. I hope you like it anyway!

JJ Powell is sixty-one years old today.

And there is nothing left of him. Except his power.

~*~

In another time, JJ is sixteen. He’s still all smiles, all enthusiasm. He believes that he can accomplish great things with his power. He believes that he will change humanity for the better.

Right now, he isn’t thinking about any of that. He’s thinking about the girl who’s curled half on top of him, her lips pressed against his, her spine long and curved against his palm. (In years to come, he’ll forget her name. Angela? Alice? Amy? Right now, he knows her as Annie.)

“Do you want to…?” Her voice is hushed, like she can’t really believe that she’s asking this. He can feel her trembling.

“Yeah,” he breathes. “I mean,” and he backtracks. “If you do.”

“I do.” She laughs.

At first, JJ is awkward. He hurts her, by accident – he can tell by the little hiss, in between her teeth, the way she tightens around him.

And then, suddenly, his brain activates. And he realizes how this works.

When she cuddles against him, after, he can tell that she’s conflicted. Part relief, part euphoric happiness.

He’s conflicted too. But it’s not any emotion he can name.

~*~

JJ is thirty-six years old, and he’s having second thoughts.

Maybe his life would have been better spent as an engineer. An academic. Maybe he should go back now, and join the foreign service, become a diplomat. Or what if he contacted the world’s mathematicians –

“Mr. President-Elect,” says his campaign manager. “They’re ready for you.”

~*~

JJ is twenty-one years old, and his sister is angry at him.

“How _could_ you?” cries Daphne. “You know how dangerous it is, JJ! You know we can’t just up and use our powers like that!”

JJ’s mind is far away. He’s thinking in percentages, votes, facts and figures. Like how he felt when he was fifteen again, cracking open a textbook on number theory or on theoretical physics. A whole new realm, and his mind could explore it with ease.

“JJ? Are you even listening to me?”

There are two sorts of protections, JJ realizes. There’s giving in to the person who’s blackmailing you, and there’s making sure they can never hurt you.

“It’ll be fine, Daph.”

~*~

If he was alive today, JJ would be one hundred and forty-one years old.

The name JJ Powell is lauded. He is mentioned in the same breath as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John F. Kennedy. Outside America: in the same breath as Gandhi, as Nelson Mandela. The greatest diplomat ever to have lived.

Nowhere is there a mention of supernatural powers.

~*~

JJ is almost forty years old, and his sister is, again, angry with him.

But this isn’t the same kind of anger. This is anger tempered by fear, tempered by hopeless pain.

“I’m so sorry, JJ,” she says, softly.

JJ’s face is blank. Inside, he feels blank. Like everything about him is blank, drained away, whittled into nothing.

“Please, stay the execution.” Her voice is pleading. “You can do it, JJ.”

Of course he can. He’s the chief executive, after all. He can issue pardons. After all, what would it look like if he allowed his sister to die, when he could have saved her? He can’t afford a hit to his career, right now.

“Life in prison,” he says. It’s a compromise. Tough on terrorism, soft on family.

~*~

JJ is twenty-one, and he realizes the extent of his powers for the first time during a rally held by a candidate for student body president, at his university.

He looks out over the crowd, and something _clicks_. People don’t work exactly like numbers, exactly like atoms or planets or gravity. But they do _work_ , and suddenly his power can understand it.

He decides to run for student body president himself. Just to see if he can do it.

~*~

JJ is seventeen years old, and his life is shattered. His vision blurs with tears, and he gasps with it, tight, ugly sobs that won’t quite work themselves out.

There is blood on his hands.

“You see, JJ,” comes a voice, from nearby, “as long as you don’t use your power, we’ll have no problem with each other.”

~*~

JJ is thirty-two, and too young to run for President of the United States.

Instead he speaks at the party’s convention. He is not one of the keynote speakers. He isn’t placed in any important timeslot. But he carefully calculates everything about his speech (he writes it himself). Carefully selects his suit and tie (all perfectly tailored). Carefully practices the way he speaks.

JJ is the only speaker to get a standing ovation that lasts more than three minutes.

An hour later, his campaign manager enthusiastically reports to him that people are saying things. Things like “why isn’t _that_ guy running for President.”

JJ smiles.

~*~

JJ is twenty-two, and graduating from university. Daphne claps and cheers for him, but when he meets up with her later, she’s nervous, scared, always looking around for enemies.

JJ is sick of it.

~*~

JJ is thirty-seven, and still not used to the pressures of the highest political office in the world.

His advisors are telling him about a war brewing in northern Africa. They’re telling him about problems in southeast Asia. They’re telling him about trouble in eastern Europe.

“I want to go,” he says.

They ask what he means.

“I want to go,” he repeats. “And see this for myself.”

~*~

JJ is fifty-three. He has won the Nobel Peace Prize for the second time.

He lifts his tired eyes to his former campaign manager, and all he sees is little sparks. Graphs. Emotions, motivations. Like little arrows pointing to exactly where JJ has to prod him to manipulate him.

JJ wonders when he lost his soul.

~*~

JJ is sixty-four years old.

He leans back, and the rocking chair creaks, idly, beneath him. The view from his porch is all dramatic mountain peaks, smooth fields. He’s never lived anywhere as beautiful as Colorado.

The door creaks beside him. Without looking, he knows it’s Daphne. There’s no one else here.

Daphne is wiry. She’s aged well; there are still streaks of brown in her hair.

“It’s so _quiet_ out here,” she says.

He tilts his head at her. “You miss the noise?”

She snorts. “Hell no.”

~*~

JJ is twenty-four years old, and he drops in on Daphne when she doesn’t expect it. Knocks, opens the door to her apartment, steps inside.

He finds her in the kitchen. There’s a pair of gloves on the table.

“Daphne, no,” he says, softly.

“I can’t get any other job,” she explains, hours later. “I always mess it up. I can’t stop reading people’s minds, JJ! I don’t know how to turn it off!”

“They _killed our parents_!”

Daphne cries.

~*~

JJ is thirty-seven, again, and he spends three months in a tour all around the world. He stops in areas of conflict. Leaves his hotel rooms, walks out among real people, with real opinions.

Everywhere, in his wake, people come together. His words inspire. His compromises help everyone, or at least hurt everyone equally.

~*~

JJ is thirty-eight. He wins the Nobel Peace Prize for the first time.

~*~

JJ is thirty-nine. Daphne is arrested while on some kind of mission, for the people who employ her.

He crumples up the newspaper story about it, and tosses it, violently, into the trash. Cancels all his meetings and broods, in the White House residence, for as long as it takes.

~*~

JJ is seventeen, and he discovers the body of his mother in her bedroom. Her eyes are empty. The blood has long since soaked into the carpet, dried a dirty brown.

He hears Daphne’s shriek from the backyard.

He panics.

~*~

JJ is sixty-four, and he quits public life. He holds a press conference, and, for once in his life, he pays no attention to the urgings of his power. He says what he wants to say. He leaves them stunned, silent.

He goes to visit his sister.

She has grey in her hair, but he still sees her for who she is. His sister, his friend, and he never should have left her behind.

He apologizes.

He calls in a favor, from the current president.

Three weeks later, he and Daphne hire a moving company to set them up in a cabin in Colorado.

‘Cabin’ is a misnomer. By this time, JJ is very, very rich.

~*~

JJ is sixteen years old. He is with his family, and he is happy.

~*~

JJ is sixty-four years old. He is with his family, and he is happy.


End file.
